Music and Child Development: Kim Toland, The Family Place

The Family Place, a private, nonprofit organization in Norwich, Vermont, offers a wide variety of programs with a whole-family approach to help children thrive.

Upper Valley Music Center, a nonprofit community music school based in Lebanon, New Hampshire, offers Music Together, a research-based music program encouraging natural, family-style learning for children ages birth through age 5 with their adult caregivers.

It’s no surprise these two nonprofits teamed up to provide music education to families in Vermont.

“The Family Place is one of 15 Parent Child Centers in Vermont,” said Kim Toland, Early Care and Education Program Director at The Family Place. “We work with children and caregivers together, promoting positive parenting strategies and ensuring children have the kinds of experiences that support their physical development, their social functioning, their ability to learn, and their long-term health. We decided we wanted to incorporate music into the program and connected with Upper Valley Music Center.”

The partnership started with The Family Place’s onsite child care program. Families from another program, Families Learning Together — a weekly program in which young parents learn job, parenting, and life skills while setting and meeting educational and employment goals — joined Music Together sessions with their children as part of the Parent Ed.curriculum.

“Music is really an educational tool; it includes counting, gross motor, rhythm,” Toland said. “Music Together classes support cognitive, speech, motor skills, and social development in young children. Parents experience the joy of their child’s learning and gain understanding of how to support their child’s growth.”

As a licensed provider of Music Together classes, UVMC provides a curriculum which includes recordings of songs; an illustrated songbook; and supplemental materials including suggestions for at-home activities, lesson planning ideas, and program development coaching. These materials are sent home to parents, who can use the tools to make music with their children throughout their lives, used by child care staff. “This wonderful partnership has really taught my staff how to use music to connect with children,” Toland said.

Toland often attends the Music Together classes, held in two classrooms of eight children ranging from infants to toddlers. “My favorite part is watching the child who is all over the place and watching the child who will sit back and take it in,” she said. “I watch the progression of both — one calms down and connects and the other is slowly drawn into the experience and engages.”

Toland notes The Family Place child care program was the first Music Together partnership in Vermont.

“We’ve been fortunate to receive grants and private donations to support this wonderful connection,” she said. “I hope other child care programs will benefit from music education moving forward.”